Committee Formed for Hiring New CA

The special meeting on the evening of Tuesday, October 11th dealt with the selection process for a new CA (city administrator) and appointment of the committee. Oh, I forgot to tell you; Andy McCown will not be coming back to Wentzville. At the meeting of September 28th Mayor Lambi lost another battle trying to hire his buddy McCown for acting CA at a rate equal to $165,000 a year. Of course he would only have been here two or three months but that could add up to over $40,000, that seemed like an awful lotta dough to me. The board put the poo-poo on the idea and Lambi pouted the rest of the evening. They also put the kibosh on hiring a consultant firm to search for a CA stating; "the city has an HR Manager" and that she can handle it. I'm not going into the whole WA-WA-WA thing again but that sums up Lambi's meeting that evening.

Back to the matter at hand: The selection committee will be comprised of the Board of Aldermen, HR Manager (Amy Holloway) and the mayor. Lambi tried to get the acting CA and directors of each department on the committee but the board once again denied his bid. They discussed and set benefits on top of a base salary of $108,000 per year plus a $6,000 car allowance which was vigorously debated by Alderman Cheryl Kross.

A discussion was had regarding a requirement that candidates need to be a member of the ICMA (International City/County Management Association) and Lambi once again made a fool of himself trying to demand its necessity. He stated; "it was an elite organization and as Chief Executive Officer I will not accept any recommendation from the board without it!" When queried, Dennis Walsh stated that it comes with very expensive price-tag. ICMA dues are 0.008 x base salary—in this case it comes to around $850 per year. Aldermen Vann Sample Jumped on Lambi's remark, "I don't want to hear that you will not accept board recommendations..." It's the first time I'd heard Sample chastise the mayor for his CEO (I'm important) talk—now it's unanimous—all of the aldermen have taken shots at him at one time or another in recent weeks for his idiotic blathering. Lambi likes calling himself "Chief Executive Officer," it gives him some sort of self-worth, I guess. It's apparent to everyone that if he had been doing his job as mayor, the Aldermen wouldn't have to be doing it for him. Another item Lambi slid in; was when he mentioned hiring an Assistant CA. There is no intention of doing that but he mentioned it for some reason and I found out later that he promised the job to another friend. It's tough finding friends when your going down, Lambi can't even buy one.

The procedure was finally set except for one more foot in Lambi's mouth. In his frustration over not getting his way, he compared the candidate to several successful men; "he needs the qualities of Ghandi, Bill Gates..."(among others.) Aware of Lambi's chauvinist characteristics, Alderman Cheryl Kross jumped in; "HELLO, Mayor, I'm here!" Red-faced and grinning like the Cheshire Cat he tried desperately to slight the fact that once again he had let his disregard of women shine through. He stumbled around to add some successful women to his list, Mother Theresa was his first choice, but the cat was definitely out of the bag regarding his low opinion of women in general. Alderman Kross should bring a pot to meetings and beat on it with a wooden spoon to get Lambi's attention and remind him that it's not nice to discriminate.